Enhanced Chinese presence in the Middle East is necessary to prevent Iran break out, oil price shocks and regional war

Barbara Slavin is a distinguished fellow at the Stimson Center in Washington and a lecturer in international affairs at George Washington University. “Risks and opportunities in an increasingly multipolar Middle East,” June 13, 2023 https://www.stimson.org/2023/risks-and-opportunities-in-an-increasingly-multipolar-middle-east/

China’s growing partnership with the Middle East is significant but not yet a strategic shift away from dominance by a U.S.-organized coalition. Still, there are potential opportunities in China’s growing profile in terms of preventing conflict. The fact that China is the major purchaser of Iranian oil is a disincentive to Iran ever carrying out its repeated threats to close the Strait of Hormuz to tanker traffic. China is also likely to urge Iran not to cross the line and build nuclear weapons.

As Secretary of State Antony Blinken set off for Saudi Arabia on June 6, 2023, the second high-level U.S. official to visit the Kingdom in a month, the State Department issued a lengthy fact sheet extolling eight decades of U.S.-Saudi relations.

That the Biden administration felt compelled to remind the world exactly what had bound the two countries for so long reflected a counterfactual: growing strains between a hydrocarbon fuel-sufficient democracy and an authoritarian monarchy that is the primary gas station for other countries, especially U.S. rival China.

The trip came at a time of shifting dynamics in a Middle East that perceives a U.S. retrenchment, even as members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and Israel continue to rely on U.S. weapons and military personnel, primarily to deter Iran. In response, the region is pursuing multi-alignment with other partners. These trends come as the U.S. enters a new presidential election season eager to avoid major crises in a part of the world that has often been the source of turmoil and U.S. military intervention for more than four decades.

To examine these trends and identify both opportunities and potential perils for U.S. policymakers over the next 18 months, the Stimson Center’s Middle East Voices and Reimagining U.S. Grand Strategy programs convened a day-long symposium of more than a dozen regional experts. The participants, several of whom agreed to be quoted by name, focused on potential shocks that could result in U.S. military action and how the U.S. might adapt to new regional dynamics. They also looked at China’s rising role and whether that might translate into a more active and constructive posture beyond midwifing a recent agreement between Iran and Saudi Arabia to normalize relations.

China’s Role

China’s profile in the Middle East has been growing for more than a decade and took a major leap in 2016, when President Xi Jinping traveled to the region and concluded multiple strategic partnership agreements, noted the Stimson Center’s Jesse Marks. The Chinese benefited from erratic U.S. policies under the Trump administration and also used “vaccine diplomacy” to great effect during the Covid crisis, providing inexpensive Sinovac shots to countries including Jordan and Iran. A U.S. non-response to rocket attacks on the Saudi oil facility at Abqaiq in 2019 marked an inflection point in Saudi/GCC perceptions of U.S. reliability. In addition, strains with the Biden administration and Congress over the Saudi killing of U.S.-based journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018 and other Saudi human rights abuses and what was seen as an incompetent U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 contributed to unhappiness with Washington in Riyadh and other regional capitals. The United Arab Emirates also objected to the lack of a firm U.S. response to attacks by Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen and Iran’s recent seizure of oil tankers.

Participants saw China’s growing partnership with the region as significant but not yet a strategic shift away from dominance by a U.S.-organized coalition. James Jeffrey, a former U.S. diplomat now chair of the Middle East Program at the Woodrow Wilson Center, noted that the U.S. still has 30-40,000 troops based in 10 Arab countries, Israel, and Turkey, provides nearly $10 billion in mostly military aid annually and sells some $150 billion in weapons, which require U.S. maintenance, spare parts, and training. However, Kristin Diwan of the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington said the U.S. is not perceived as injecting stability in the region and that Arab countries see “an alternative global order” in which they are not obliged to follow U.S. dictates. “There is a sense of happiness and rediscovery of agency in the Middle East because the U.S. left and is not playing such a role in deciding who is in charge,” said Trita Parsi of the Quincy Institute. “The U.S. focus is on Ukraine and Taiwan, allowing the space for [Middle East] détente.”

Participants pointed to potential opportunities in China’s growing profile in terms of preventing conflict. For example, the fact that China is the major purchaser of Iranian oil is a disincentive to Iran ever carrying out its repeated threats to close the Strait of Hormuz to tanker traffic. China is also likely to urge Iran not to cross the line and build nuclear weapons out of fear that could trigger a military confrontation which would also imperil oil shipments and threaten the global economy. In addition, China is concerned that Iran’s eventual acquisition of nuclear weapons might inspire similar actions in East Asia. Should a crisis loom, several participants suggested, the Arab League could request Chinese intervention and point out the big discrepancy between the interests of China, a major oil importer, and Russia, which would benefit from a war in the Persian Gulf and skyrocketing oil prices.